"Carousel" by Genelle Chaconas

Carousel

Down the pier, past abandoned ticket counters, you vault over turnstiles rusted in place. Neon spasms, misspelled names of god. Midway booths collapsing, roofs tilted, rotting banners loose in the breeze. Somewhere music plays, a warped record, corroded ragtime. Eyes stare out of the concrete cupids beside the stagnant Tunnel of Love. The Ferris wheel creaks through the bruised sky. A car stalls, waiting for you.

Genelle Chaconas

Genelle Chaconas is nonbinary-gendered, queer, and an abuse survivor, who has mood disorders and feels proud. They earned a BA in Creative Writing from CSUS in 2009, an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University in 2015, and 50k of debt. They never learned to take photographs but takes them anyway. They've been published a lot but don't like to namedrop. Their chapbooks include Fallout Saints and Dirty Pictures (little m press, 2011) and Yet Wave (The Lune, 2017). They serve as head editor for HockSpitSlurp Literary Magazine. They enjoy sci-fi and gangster flicks, drone / noise / industrial music, and long walks off short piers.

Headshot: Genelle Chaconas

Photo Credit: Staff